Dear Brothers and Sisters, Friends and Family,

How I love and appreciate you! 

Would you please help me by carefully reviewing the Appleton Wisconsin Stake vision and goals for 2024?

One Focus: His House and our Lord

Two Tools from Stake and Zone

Three Steps, Zion toward

Four paths gather Israel Home

ONE FOCUS 
Have you watched recently the 2018 broadcast of the living prophet, President Russell M. Nelson, facing the world, with his new First Presidency and the Quorum of the Twelve in the glass-walled annex with the large backdrop of the Salt Lake Temple behind them?  Our prophet spoke:  “Now, we must look forward to the future, with complete faith in our Lord Jesus Christ whose Church this is…The ordinances of the temple and the covenants you make there are key to strengthening your life, your marriage and family, and your ability to resist the attacks of the adversary. Your worship in the temple and your service there for your ancestors will bless you with increased personal revelation and peace and will fortify your commitment to stay on the covenant path.” (1)

To stay afloat during the downpours of today, how we need the limitless buoyancy from focusing on our Savior and God’s covenant path leading us to His temple!  Experiencing regularly the House of the Lord’s simplicity helps us through life’s complexity. 

TWO TOOLS
Missionaries and Members, when we are willing to be two paired tools in the hands of the Lord, He truly creates miracles!  “Your ability to link the enthusiasm of the missionaries with the loving stability and helpful efforts of the members cannot be overemphasized,” President Nelson has said. (2) Thank you to all of you who are more than ever before striving to work closer and more in step together!  Thank you for welcoming missionaries and friends into your homes!  The resultant smiles of our new and returning members is evidence they are being blessed by “covenant belonging.”

THREE STEPS
The Savior will return again to His people whom in the scriptures He calls Zion.  Zion engages in three Christ-centered activities:   Be united in Jesus.  Dwell in His righteousness.  Eliminate poverty through Him. (3)  I see Zion being created in you as you feed each other both delicious food and words of kindness, as you drive the distance with a friend to the temple or church, and as you donate your hard-earned coins as fast offerings to the bishop.  Thank you for catching the vision of Zion and sharing it with others in His name!  The Lord loves you!

FOUR PATHS 
If you haven’t already had the blessing of having a stake magnet hand-delivered to you by the full-time missionaries, you are invited to sign up!  They will explain what the four paths are leading to Zion and the focus of welcoming Christ and the temple more fully into our lives.  For those who have, Thank you!  One ward recently heard the testimony of a member whose faithful effort to bless a friend along one of these four paths actually had a bystander effect that blessed an unexpected friend as well to subsequently meet with the missionaries!  She testified that God loves effort and blesses us when we strive.

I testify that as we prayerfully invite friends along these paths to gather Israel unto Christ and His temple, we will be blessed with a greater outpouring of the Spirit to guide us in the challenges of our own lives.  God is our loving Heavenly Father and His Plan for our Happiness is focused on the Redeemer and enacted through our covenants with Him on the path to the House of the Lord. 

In the name of Jesus Christ, Amen!

References:

(1)   https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/bc/content/ldsorg/church/news/2018/01/19/2018-01-1000-a-message-from-the-first-presidency.pdf?lang=eng

(2)   “President Nelson Shares the “Hopes of My Heart” with New Mission Leaders”, June 26, 2018, https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/church/news/president-nelson-shares-the-hopes-of-my-heart-with-new-mission-leaders

(3)   “Come to Zion”, General Conference, October 2008, Elder Todd D. Christofferson